We’re accustomed to comic strip names, and some other make-believe tags, that reflect the nature of particular characters.
But the real name of a ruthless military leader in Serbia, in southeastern Europe, is Ratko Mladic. Yes, that’s “Ratko.”
He’s in the news now because he is charged with having orchestrated Europe’s worst massacre of civilians since World War II.
Mladic was arrested only last week – after a 16-year hunt for him. He is charged with having been primarily responsible for the 1995 slaughter of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica. It was being guarded at the time as a “safe zone” by so-called U.N. “peacekeepers.” They surrendered without firing a shot.
As Mladic was being tried in absentia before a war crimes court, a judge said there was evidence of “unimaginable savagery: thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson.”